“Support? System Down” Film Documents Evils of Family Law

At the recent California Coalition for Families and Children (CCFC) meeting in Del Mar, film producer Angelo Lobo was in the audience. He discussed his film Support? System Down which documents injustices in the family courts and child support systems in the form of interviews of 38 parents involved in custody and child support disputes. Also interviewed are a number of other parties and relatives, including family law attorneys, family rights activists, and grandparents.
Lobo mentioned that he didn’t know how unjustly many children and parents are treated until working on the film. It’s a common theme, most people have no idea how abusive, corrupt, and destructive the family law courts are until they encounter them as part of high-conflict child custody or divorce battle. But even moderate conflict disputes can still result in parental alienation, financial devastation, and long-term psychological damage for children and parents.

Lobo is particularly concerned about the impact on children. Due to court injustices, many children are no longer able to see half of their family — not just missing out on one of their parents, but also on time with their grandparents, cousins, and other relatives.

Canadian journalist Paula Todd interviewed Angelo Lobo regarding the film. You can see the interview below:

Particularly shocking is the way that military parents are treated. They are ordered off to combat, often taking a huge cut in their pay from their civilian jobs and being paid at military reserve forces pay rates, only to come home to be immediately jailed for failure to pay child support that exceeds their wartime income. Laws to prevent this were passed in many jurisdictions, but American governments do not obey the laws.

Money is more important to local governments than children or parents are. Local governments derive a substantial portion of their revenue from federal Title IV-D funding that rewards them for persecuting parents to collect child support, taking children from their families to put them into foster care, and classifying parents as violent and abusive and reporting them on government black lists such as California’s Child Abuse Central Index. CACI was ruled to be unconstitutional by the US 9th District Federal Court of Appeals in 2008 but is still in operation because the state and local governments refuse to obey the courts and laws. The continue to treat people who have never been charged or convicted and even some who have been declared “factually innocent” by courts. They can make money from the federal government by doing so due to the Title IV-D laws. Weighing revenue over rights, the governments pick revenue consistently.

Crime Rewarded by Family Law Courts

Litigants in this system often feel that in San Diego family law courts, crime pays. The courts reward the crimes of false accusations against good parents. Government agencies such as the police and CPS frequently involve themselves in these cases, too. When they can’t find any criminal activity, they virtually never go after the falsely accusing party. Instead, they sometimes punish accused parents without a trial or due process by helping to deprive them of custody for months or years and to financially and emotionally destroy them.

In many cases, the government knows they have no way to prove there was ever any child abuse in the first place. But they want their pound of flesh. So the police or CPS put their targets on child abuser watch lists that have been ruled as unconstitutional violations of the law. They and other government agencies then use these lists as excuses to destroy the targets.

For example, the government can go after a target with financial attacks by revoking or refusing to issue professional licenses. One woman falsely accused of child abuse had her years of training to be a nurse deep-sixed by the government as they refuse to issue her nursing license. She’s listed on the CACI child abuse index because the investigation was marked “inconclusive”. She was never charged with a crime, nor did she ever get a trial. But she’s been tried and found guilty by the police and is now stuck in a low-paying waitressing job because California bullies her unjustly.

The result of these injustices are ruined lives, damaged children and parents, even violence and death as shown in the video clip below.

Also in the audience at the CCFC meeting was San Diego resident Eileen Lasher and her two adult children, all victims of judicial and government corruption and parental alienation that left them separated for several years. Although Eileen’s divorce started in 1995, it is still not over today, nearly 15 years later. Both her son and daughter moved out of their San Diego cop father’s home long ago after not having seen their mother for years due to injustices by the courts. Eileen was required to continue to pay child support to him even though the children were living with her. You can read more about Eileen’s story and access a video interview produced by Fred Sottile through our previous article Eileen Lasher on San Diego CPS/Family Law Court Misconduct.

Synopsis by Agileno Productions

SUPPORT? is a film that covers the everyday issues of stress, family, struggle, and suffering that families experience when put through the detrimental, winding maneuvers of the Family Court systems, which are flooded with more cases than the labor force can handle or chooses NOT to handle. Finally, a shocking documentary that exposes the truth! Hear what experts say about how some have figured out how to make money by emphasizing on divorce and child support issues between men and women through court orders. Parents are made to pay exorbitant amounts of money in exchange for their CREDIT, HOMES, BANK ACCOUNTS, and even their FREEDOM! Exposed…SUPPORT? brings you deep into the MILITARY angle! Go face-to-face with the attorneys that handle the cases of the men and women who give their lives to protect our homeland. Shockingly, when soldiers return home after fighting, they are met with incarceration when they arrive on American soil for child support payments that they were unable to make while abroad. Is this justice? You be the judge! SUPPORT? was made to be educational and provocative in order to spark a call to action to bring about much-needed reform in the family courts. American children should not have to suffer due to an ineffectual and corrupt legal system!

“At the recent California Coalition for Families and Children (CCFC) meeting in Del Mar, film producer Angelo Lobo was in the audience. He discussed his film Support? System Down which documents injustices in the family courts and child support systems in the form of interviews of 38 parents involved in custody and child support disputes. Also interviewed are a number of other parties and relatives, including family law attorneys, family rights activists, and grandparents.”

I can personally attest to the injustices at the hands of OC family law commissioners — especially Thomas Schulte — who use their power to ignore the law and use their courtroom to wield personal vendettas.

Feel free to view Vogt v. Vogt, filed OC family law court Sept 1998 if you believe the OC family law courts are without prejudice or bias.

Too Big to jail – or even accuse – in San Francisco: New online book DOCUMENTS the conspiracy (1998-2001) between San Francisco’s City Attorneys’ Office & Children Protective Services & S.F.P.D. to protect the firefighters’ union (I.A.F.F. local #798) from our allegations of theft of U.S. mail & sabotage. What’s worse than the crime? Everybody knows it’s the cover-up, but what’s worse than the cover-up? That’s when those in charge of those who were looking the other way keep on climbing into ever-bigger seats of power.

Specifically, I refer to the two deputy city attorneys overseeing the three foul custody trials (and a futile, concurrent appeal all the way to the California Supremes) that forced us to remain here to file (and win a settlement signed 12 July 1999) in San Francisco courts rather than have a real (i.e. FEDERAL) trial back home in the Baton Rouge, Louisiana Federal Courthouse, where we have family and land outside Lafayette, Louisiana. In charge of the deputy city attorneys who prosecuted child abuse/neglect were those two political bluebloods: Katherine Feinstein (1998-2000) now a judge and on the panel for Judicial Performance and recently voted ‘Judge of the Year’ by the San Francisco Trial Lawyers Association and this week elected to be the presiding judge of the Superior Court of San Francisco (also the daughter of California’s senior senator) and Kamala Harris (2000-2003) now the twice-elected D.A. and running hard for California Attorney General (also the former mistress of then-Mayor Willie Brown). Her brother-in-law, Tony West was recently hand-picked as assistant attorney general of the civil rights division of the Justice Department.

Nobody in America should be as afraid as I am. My husband was brutally attacked the day we received the final draft of the lawsuit against the firefighters’ union (16 Dec 1999); indeed, it happened the very hour I was at the attorney’s office. Quite a message that was to come home to. He was hospitalized over a month. But we filed anyway – and signed a settlement on #300155 six months later. I am blowing up my quiet little world forever and I mourn that deeply, but the only way to expose corruption is to expose yourself. This is no ‘he said, she said’ story they can all side-step: I have documented almost four dozen pieces of terroristic threat, malice-in-law, perjury in court petitions, tampering, suppression, and manufacturing of documenting evidence that show our children were used as political pawns.

This manuscript is available only online in an instant-view format and it is based on 75% paper that is marked confidential and comes with its own penal code. But it will be the D.A.’s office that has to file on it though…that’s a conflict-of-interest even by San Francisco loose standards! If I get gagged, at least I can welcome the opportunity to argue in open court before full press that the City breached the judicial firewall – not I – because those with dirty hands cannot hide them behind the cloak of confidentiality.

I think it is an absolute shame that the two previous posts sum up what this country has come to due to an inept system that dictates parental rights. An outdated law crazily reviewed by some hoity toity do gooder who is in my opinion clearly out of touch with todays society based on the findings’ of his report. I am fortunate enough to see my daughter from a previous relationship as both my ex partner and I are reasonable people and understand it is in the best interests of our child. As a result, she is one of the happiest kids anybody would ever meet! My brother on the other hand is climbing the walls as his ex is pulling out every false trick possible to ensure he can’t see his kids just so she can win’. I would be beside myself if my ex decided I could not see my daughter again and the fact a stupid ruling in family law so it is ok for a mother to make that decision makes me furious!!